01. The One I Once Was 04:46 02. The Pain Infernal and the Fall Eternal 05:16 03. The Eye of the Storm 05:10 04. The Malice of Life’s Cruel Ways 05:02 05. The Wheel of Fire 04:09 06. The Chains that Wield My Mind 04:30 07. The New Desire 03:50 08. The Vile Bringer of Self-Destructive Thoughts 03:52 09. The Candle at the Tunnel’s End 04:00

Morten Veland is something of a pioneer in the world of Gothic Metal; he was one of the founder members of Tristania, and went on to leave them to form Sirenia. So it’s fair to say he knows his way around the genre, and it’s not much of a surprise that his solo project produces exactly that. For the sake of continuity, he’s even managed to end the band name in “-ia”.

This is a proper solo project, no messing about with guest musicians or even producers - Veland has done literally everything himself, all of the instruments, music, lyrics, even the recording, engineering, mixing and producing. In his own studios. The one concession he’s made to the existence of the rest of the musical world is to use a choir, but I bet that’s just because he didn’t have time to multi-track himself singing all twenty parts. Yes, this is the Morten Veland show, his musical vision finally put straight from his head to record in its purest form.
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01. Snakes for the Divine 08:23 02. Frost Hammer 06:07 03. Bastard Samurai 06:37 04. Ghost Neck 05:01 05. The Path 01:20 06. Fire, Flood and Plague 06:08 07. How Dark We Pray 08:06 08. Holy Flames of the Fire Spitter 04:13

It’s hard to believe that it’s coming up on three years since the last High on Fire album was released. That founder, guitarist and vocalist Matt Pike takes this long to produce an album is always going to instill a note of fear in his fans, most of whom are still traumatised by the saga of “Dopesmoker”. Pike’s old band, stoner metal legends Sleep, attempted to release “Dopesmoker” in 1995, but it didn’t see the light of day until eight years later, by which time the band had long since broken up. Pike has actually been busy with a Sleep reunion in the last year or so, but fear not, High on Fire devotees: “Snakes for the Divine” has actually been released, at long last!

Notably, “Snakes for the Divine” was produced by Greg Fidelman, famed for his peerless work on Slayer’s “World Painted Blood” and Metallica’s “Death Magnetic”, when he rescued both of those legendary bands from sounding like nu-metal ponces. He’s once again gone for the crisp, precise, dry kind of sound he brought to those albums, so it’s a slight departure from the explosive High on Fire sound we all know and love. However, if you take a moment to get used to it, this new style actually works really very well.
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01. The Ballad of Solomon Eagle 05:17 02. Vagrant Stomp 04:49 03. The Ale House Braves 03:49 04. Cities of Frost 05:34 05. Hot Knives and Open Sores 04:21 06. Hounds Ditch 05:30 07. Mortlake (Dead Water) 02:11 08. They Come Back (Harvest of Skulls) 04:43 09. Beginners Guide to Suicide 08:05

The racket Orange Goblin specialise in tends to be referred to as ‘stoner metal’. Indeed, they’re reputed to be the UK’s premier exponents of that particular sub-genre. They epitomised that style on their standout third album, 2000’s ‘The Big Black’, but since then have been moving in a more traditional heavy-metal direction. By the time their sixth album, 2007’s ‘Healing Through Fire’ rolled around, staple traditional stoner tracks like ‘Scorpionica’ were a thing of the past. Sure, there are hints of it at various points on ‘Healing Through Fire’, it’s definitely still an influence, but to be honest you’d be hard pressed to actually define this as a stoner metal record. I don’t know what you’d call it, really…it’s just really fucking metal.

‘Healing Through Fire’ is all brash, swaggering aggression, a rousing drunken salute to heavy music. That lively, stomping tone is set right from the outset with ”The Ballad of Solomon Eagle“, which is by no means a ballad in the traditional sense. Although from Orange Goblin, I doubt you were expecting “Total Eclipse of the Heart” anyway…which isn’t to say I wouldn’t give a kidney to hear them cover that. It’s hard to explain, really, but listening to this album makes me feel like my hair isn’t nearly long enough, and gives me a sudden impulse to grow a large mountain-man style beard, behind which I can stomp around glaring at people. Tracks like “Ale House Braves” and “Hounds Ditch” typify this kind of feeling; it’s the kind of song you expect to find playing in one of those dingy bars populated entirely by bikers and stereotypical ‘road people’ out of Kerouac novels who hop freight trains. Even the barman has a denim jacket, and tattoos on his face, and there’s probably an underground fight club in the basement. It’s pure attitude music.
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Photos from the Mastodon show in Newcastle on February 21st. We also met the folks who caught Brann Dailor’s drumstick see the first picture! Photos by Victoria Baker and Ewan McNulty.

01. Badge And A Gun 3:40 02. In The City 3:10 03. You Belong To Me 4:06 04. Mrs. Operator 3:12 05. Higher & Higher 4:53 06. Too Much 3:34 07. Fortune And Fame 3:00 08. Superman 4:32 09. You 3:20 10. Champagne, Chicks & Rock n’ Roll 2:28

‘Fuck me, not another band covered in tattoos.’
- Christopher Persuad-Jagdhar, The Wildhearts

Originality seems to be something of a problem in music these days; regardless of which genre a band are considered to be a part of, more often than not there will be older acts with whom they share similarities. This is largely true of the recent wave of Swedish rock och roll seen on Ragnarok of late, but is it true of Mama Kin?

Named after a track on Aerosmith’s first album, they play soulful melodic rock. The album starts with a police siren (like Guns N’ Roses’ ‘Appetite For Destruction’) and goes on to paint a sleazy picture of the rock ‘n’ roll city of… erm, Karlstad (like Guns N’ Roses’ ‘Appetite For Destruction’). The band’s personnel have a cool glam image (like Guns N’ Roses’ ‘Appetite For Destruction’). However, it sounds very little like Guns N’ Roses’ ‘Appetite For Destruction’, and to be fair, it would be extremely difficult for a band to live up to such a seminal work - but hey, no one said they were trying to, and who says that unoriginality strictly has to be a bad thing?
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01. My Heart Cries Out For You 04:44 02. Dark Journey 04:52 03. Land Of Street Survivor 04:17 04. Pay the Price 03:27 05. Destiny’s Call 04:54 06. Evil Masquerade 05:04 07. Running Out Of Time 04:35 08. Spellbound 04:37 09. Only The Strong Will Survive 03:29 10. Epic 04:38

‘Where the Eagles Fly’ and indeed the band responsible, Dark Illusion, inspire a strange conflict within me. I’m almost perfectly evenly divided between two opposing forces, and I really can’t decide which side of the fence to fall on. To that end, I’m going to do something a bit fruity and effectively write two reviews of this album. Each side will make their case, and I’ll leave it down to you, the reader, the civilian jury, to decide who wins. To start with, here’s the case from the prosecution, led by the part of me that’s an angry misanthropic shit of a man.

I don’t want this to turn into a philosophical debate about the nature of creativity and originality, but let’s face it, your classic melodic power metal isn’t a genre steeped in fresh ideas and innovation. Dark Illusion are a perfect example of this. I mean, to start with the first thing you saw up there, all of the songs are just named after the most-repeated line in the song. The album itself is named after a line from the chorus of the first song. They didn’t even have enough inspiration to come up with a couple of extra words. What makes it even worse is that all of said lines are pure cheesy filth as well.
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01. Express Death 06:59 02. Pyramids 06:46 03. Paper Walls 05:48 04. He Dives Down 06:56 05. Terra Incognita 09:04 06. Lucky Me, Lucky You 04:14 07. Super Globe Of Pain 06:27 08. The Electric Hour 05:17

I’ll get it out of the way right from the start - Switch Opens are a Swedish metal band. Yeah, I know, you’re probably scuttling for cover toward the stereotype of all those identical ‘Gothenburg scene’ melodic death metal bands…but fear not. To start with, Switch Opens are from Stockholm, some 300 miles away from Gothenburg. And when it comes to metal, their sound too is a comparable distance away.

No, this isn’t another melodeath screamathon. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure what it is. It’s really quite fascinating to dream up a list of Switch Opens’ probable influences while listening through this album - they create a haze of fuzz that screams Kyuss, but some of their riffs sound more rooted in Southern Metal, with the likes of Down or Corrosion of Conformity. Their down ’n’ dirty groove kind of puts you in mind of Motörhead, albeit a more doomy Motörhead, maybe on Valium…and on top of that, they appear to share a name with a Soundgarden song. Putting all of that together, I suppose, makes this seem like the work of hairy stoners.
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05. I’m On My Way 4:49 06. I Don’t Give A Good God Damn 3:03 07. Bad Father, Bad Son 3:06 08. Ain’t It December 3:26 09. Black Eyes On A Saturday 5:42 10. MTV Killed Rock N’ Roll 4:28 11. Medicine 3:14 12. Die Beautiful 3:56 13. Move To Detroit 2:56 14. Jona Song 3:24 15. Demolition Man 6:02

Sweden has given us some great things over the years… meatballs… Vikings… that’s all I can think of at the moment. It has also produced the likes of Arch Enemy, Opeth and Bathory when it comes to extreme metal, and then there’s the more straightforward rockin’ bands like The Hellacopters, Backyard Babies, and Europe (hey, they were pretty good when you listened past ‘The Final Countdown’). Von Benzo fit into the latter of these two camps, but don’t quite inspire in the same way.

Opener ‘And The Dead Said No’ has a very cool intro, and a lovely feeling that something spectacular is about to be unleashed; like slowly taking the lid off of a box marked ‘FREE SWEETS’. Sadly, the song is a less-than-memorable rock standard, what would be a very nice pre-chorus turning out to be the chorus itself; like looking inside the box to discover the sweets are all mint humbugs or coffee Revels. This sets a precedent for a what is largely a whole album of cannon fodder.
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01. Dirt Bound 03:43 02. Hard Livin’ Man 03:18 03. No Doubt About It 03:59 04. Straight Shooters 03:33 05. Elvis Chapel Blues 04:35 06. Fill Your Head With Rock 05:12 07. Dog 03:15 08. A Shot Of You 03:22 09. Butter You Up 03:34 10. Swan Song 04:10 11. Sicker Than I Think 03:44

I have a hard time believing that Bonafide are actually Swedish. There’s something deeply 80s Americana about them. This is a band who fantasise about fast cars, sleep in leather jackets, and use a gang chant of “hell yeah” as about 40% of their backing vocals. Everything about their image and their music suggests they’re probably from California…but they’re not. They’re just trying really, really hard to be.

Seriously, has anyone informed Bonafide what decade it is? This album really sounds like it should be playing over the end-credits of a rubbish 80s road-trip movie. I can’t listen to opening track ’Dirt Bound’ without seeing a slow-motion high-five, and maybe a red sports car tearing off into a California sunset. And it goes on in the same fashion, attempted hard-rock anthem after attempted hard-rock anthem. You barely even notice the gaps between songs, it’s just a montage of spandex-clad riffs, facepalm-inducing backing vocal harmonies and predictable guitar solos. Now, I’ve never said a bad word in my life about guitar solos, and yet here Bonafide are trying to make me be that guy. You just see theirs coming a mile off. A lot like everything else in their music, really.
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